I am currently reading "Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer" by Maurice Wilkes, MIT press. The following text from p. 145 may amuse readers. [p. 145] By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. I well remember then this realization first came on me with full force. The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below [...]. I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equation. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that "hesitating at the angles of stairs" the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to spent in finding errors in my own programs. N.
On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> I am currently reading "Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer" by Maurice
> Wilkes, MIT press. The following text from p. 145 may amuse readers.
[...]
You were lucky! Back in my Uni days (punched cards on the 029) we only
had the overnight batch run on the 360/50, so we quickly learned to code
properly lest the output be returned with the dreaded "syntax error".
-- Dave